Remember my "Republicans are Scum" post?

Well, MediaMatters did an excellent write up to Sean Hannity's continued Islamophobic attacks on Congressmen Keith Ellison, and Ellison's response that Hannity should be ashamed at being so immoral by saying so may things on the air that aren't true. Haniity, for his part, just amped up his attacks, but here's a list of 10 Examples of Sean Hannity saying things that aren't true.

If you don't want to read the whole post, here's the short list. If you [Conservatives] doubt any of these, don't bother arguing them here unless you first check out the citations and background evidence that MMFA presents. I grow weary of replying to such arguments with "read the fucking article."


10. Hannity Hyped RNC's Doctored Audio Of Supreme Court Arguments. [Media Matters, 3/30/12]

9. Hannity Distorted CBO Data To Attack Obama. [Media Matters, 2/2/12]

8. Hannity Falsely Claimed A White House Adviser "Advocated Compulsory Abortion." [Media Matters, 9/9/09]

7. Hannity Falsely Claimed Obama Called The Death Of Four Americans "Just A Bump In The Road."  [Media Matters, 9/25/12]

6. Hannity Spread False Report That Egypt Was Considering Necrophilia Bill.  [Media Matters, 4/30/12; Huffington Post, 4/26/12]

5. Hannity's Special On "Liberal Bias" Featured Wildly Distorted And Out-Of-Context Quotes.  [Media Matters, 4/24/11]

4. Hannity Cast Doubt On Scientific Consensus About Climate Change. [Media Matters, 12/4/09, 1/13/10, 8/27/10, 11/19/10, 6/24/11]

3. Hannity Fueled Myth That Obama Is A Muslim.  [Media Matters, 3/24/11, 3/21/12]

2. Hannity Fed The Birther Movement. [Media Matters, 3/28/11, 4/20/12]

1. Hannity Ignored Overwhelming Evidence To Repeatedly Claim Obama's Policies Have Not Helped Improve The Economy. [Media Matters, 1/13/10, 7/14/11, 2/2/12]


And remember... This is a man who's paid approximately $20,000,000 per year - enough to hire over 500 School Teacher, about 230 Engineers, or 80 Medical Doctors.

And as interesting as I'm sure it will be to see some anonymous Conservative poster try to debunk ANY of these as not being actual false hoods, I defy that same poster, or indeed any Conservative to give me a similar list for say, Rachael Maddow, or Keith Olberman, or Ed Shultz, or Chris O'Donnell, or MMFA for that matter!

(Remember when William tried that? He posted one example of MMFA ADMITTING they got something wrong, one example that was clearly a true statement, and one that was said (by some RW website) to contain misinformation, which turned out to be taken verbatim from the subject's own tax returns!)

I'm sure any Conservative could come up with a list of 10 examples of things that were said by one of these people that were LIBERAL, but I'll vote a strait Republican ticket in the 2014 mid-terms if they can come up with a list of 10 examples of things that were said by one of these people that were actually FALSE. Lots of luck!

Lies du Jour, Part Two

(If you haven’t read part one yet, please do so. I don’t feel like repeating the context.)


So now that we, hopefully, have some perspective on the idea that tax cuts will (or even CAN) pay for themselves, let’s take a look at the two statements. Did Obama create the deficit? Or, less absurdly, how much of this did he REALLY inherit from Bush? Here’s a graphic that breaks down some of the larger components of the deficit:

Two Wars? Bush. Bush Tax cuts? Bush. Economic Down turn? Started in August 2007 and ended in April, 2009 so… 18 months under Bush, 2 months under Obama. Yeah, I’d say that’s Bush. (Even putting aside that it was the result of bank de-regulation, which is part of the Republican agenda anyway!) TARP? Bush.  Stimulus? Fine: 50/50. Both had their stimulus packages and both cleared the $700 Billion mark. So this deficit is four-and-a-half parts Bush, and just one-half-part Obama.


Now… I make no (negative) value judgments on any of these things. I supported the Auto-Bailouts (not shown, but perhaps deficit neutral, on paper anyway, since the gov't got an asset for thier money) wholeheartedly, for example.  Thank you, President Bush! (Disclosure: I work in the auto industry) and eventually came to recognize TARP as a necessary evil. I didn’t LIKE it, but I can’t condemn it. It was needed. BUT… it was still BUSH, and it still contributed to the deficit. In fact, it's remarkable how small the deficit would actually be if it weren’t for the Republicans, so it’s kind of absurd that they’ve made it their #1 issue!

Now… has Obama raised taxes? Again: NO. No. No. No! In fact he’s lowered them once already, and will actually lower them again next year! Wait a sec… then… what’s all this noise on Fox about how taxes are going up next year? Well… they are. But… you just said…? Hang on a sec. Let’s get in the “way-back” machine and take a good hard look at those “Bush Tax Cuts.”

These were passed in 2003, when the Republicans controlled both houses of congress and had Bush in the White House. They were officially called the “Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.” And one of the key, but frequently ignored, provisions in the legislation was they were scheduled to expire on Jan 1, 2011 unless some ADDITIONAL action was taken. Expire. On 1/1/11. ALL of them. That’s the existing law, as written by Republicans, and signed by George W. Bush: Effecive 2011, the tax rates will return to their previous, Bill Clinton-era levels. It’s perhaps worth noting that Barack Obama would not even be elected to the Senate until 2004, his term starting in 2005. So this law passed two years before Obama entered the Senate as anything but a tourist. He could not possibly have had anything to do with it!

So when your taxes “go up” (or ‘return to their previous levels’) it is because of legislative action taken by REPUBLICANS and GEORGE W. BUSH.  Be sure to remember that and tank them approprioately.

So what has Obama done? Well, in early 2009, as part of the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,” Obama lowered payroll taxes for everyone making less that $250,000 a year. That’s 98% of American according to the latest available census data! And last time I checked, 51% was a majority. (A MANDATE, if you’re a Republican candidate apparently.) So right off the bat, Obama lowered taxes. My take-home pay went up IMMEDIATELY by $68 per month, for example. Pretty much everyone’s did. Well… 98% of America anyway. But most people either have no idea, or have forgotten. Maybe because Fox News keeps hammering home the misinformation of Obama being a tax-raiser. Convenient, in an election year, but unfortunately not true at all. (Fair and Balanced folks!)  If you don't believe me, just look at your paycheck the first couple months of 2009.  You'll SEE the increase.  It's THERE.  Pretty much EVERYONE got it!

So what about next year? What about 2011? Well, remember that if Obama did nothing at all, took no action, the BUSH legislation effectively would raise (restore) tax rates back to their previous levels.  Becuase they were set to expire unless other legislative action was taken.  And guess what?  President Obama is TAKING THAT ADDITIONAL LEGISLATIVE ACTION!!!  In the budget he's proposing, those "Bush Tax Cuts" would remain in place for the first $250,000 of income.  And... if you understand how a progressive taxation works, you'll realize that this means that EVERYONE will be paying a lower effective than the otherwise would have been if Obama did nothing at all! (Yes, even those people who make more than that.  They'll still get the break on the first $250K)

I'm sure this sounds convoluted to the avewrage conservtive, but it's absolute FACT and absolute TRUTH.  Obama is a TAX CUTTER.  And you just can't escape that.

One concession I'll make...

If the budget goes through like he's proposing, in future discussion about the deficit, I will galdly refer to them as the "OBAMA TAX CUTS" instead of the "Bush Tax Cuts."  That's only fair.  If he's going to get hammered over the deficit, he's should at least get his due credit for cutting taxes.

Lies du Jour, Part One

There are two particularly annoying meme’s being pushed right now by the Right about Obama and the Democrats:

1. That Obama created the deficit
2. That Obama raised taxes.
3. There are both true and both bad and thus both are reasons to vote Republican.

First things last: neither is true. And we'll get to that in part two.

But let me put that aside for the moment, and first point out the absurdity of the idea that the deficit can be your #1 issue when you’re calling for TAX CUTS! Now… am I saying tax cuts are BAD? No. Not at all. They stimulate the economy. That’s right. You read that right. They DO. In fact the idea that cutting taxes can stimulate the economy if every bit as much part of the Keynsian economic model as the fact that increasing spending stimulates the economy is. And both work the same way: The multiplier. If you cut taxes, or increase spending you increase the income of America by [some multiplier, greater than 1] times the amount of the change. And like wise raising taxes and cutting spending will have the same negative effect: the income of America will change by [some negative multipler, greater than -1] times the amount fo the change. Conservatives are more than happy to accept the tax half of the Keynsian model, but for some reason they can never seem to swallow the spending side of it. And the real kicker is that the multiplier ofr spending are GREATER than the multipliers for taxes. The end results is that a balanced budget always has a multiplier of “1.” If you raise taxes AND raise spending by [X] collective income will INCREASE by [X]. If you cut taxes AND cut spending by [X] collective income will DECREASE by [X]. They never buy it, but if you take an economics course, regardless of the ideology of the professor, you will learn this. It’s a FACT.

BUT… that’s all about the effect on the ECONOMY. If you’re concerned about the ECONOMY? Fine, cut taxes. (Or increase spending, whatever.) But you can’t be expected to be taken seriously if you’re talking about cutting taxes to decrease the DEFICIT. (Well, OK, yeah you CAN, only because there are a lot of real idiots in this country. In any case you SHOULDN’T BE taken seriously by ANYONE.) Because that’s like saying, “My credit card debt is getting too high, so I better quit my job.” The deficit is SPENDING minus TAXES. So… if you lower taxes, you can ONLY increase the deficit!

Duh!

Now… some will argue that the multiplier effect I mentioned earlier can fix this. That if we cut taxes (for example) the resulting growth will result in more tax revenue. (Or at least as much as we had before.) That’s the idea behind the now widely discredited Laffer Curve. Personally I think Laffer had a legitimate point, but he his partisanship caused him err when trying to figure out where exactly on the curve we were, as well as what the exact shape (slope) of the curve is, and where the center of it is. In any case, let me demonstrate why tax cuts (or spending icreases, for that matter) will never “pay for themselves,” why they will ALWAYS contribute to the deficit, unless offset by spending cuts (or tax increases):

  

Let say you’ve got a company with $100 in taxable income (profit) and we’re taxing them at 30%. (That a bit higher than most US corporations pay, but it makes the math easier.) SO you get $30 in tax revenue from them.  How much growth would they need to see for a 5% reduction in taxation to “pay for itself.” (Meaning: for it to be deficit neutral.) Well… to get that same $30 at just a 25% rate of taxation, they’d need to make $120 in pre-tax profit. IOW: they’d have to see 20% growth! Note: Few companies EVER see 20% growth, and a 5% tax cut on it's opwn just ain’t going to do it! How do I know this? First of all, most companies require a Return on Investment of just 10%, 15%, 20%... something on that order. To turn that $5 of tax savings into $20 of income would require a 300% return! And if a company had a way to get a 300% return on their money? They’d do it. Period. Right now. They’d find a way to beg, borrow or steal that $5 they needed. But guess what? There are not a whole lot of projects out there with a 300% ROI. None really. At 20%, that company would made $101 in taxable income from that $5 investment and pay $25.25 in taxes. IWO – we added $4.75 to the deficit by doing this.

Even IF one considered the multiplier effect, the results are still nowhere near where they need to be. To turn a $5 tax cut into $20 of taxable income requires a multiplier of FOUR. And no legitimate economist goes throwing numbers like THAT around lightly. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that your going WAAAY out on a limb to assume it.  Here, for example, is a graph by Mark Zandi of Moody’s showing the benefit of each dollar spent on various parts of the stimulus package in 2008:

(And yes, I know that looks like crap bleeding over like that, but it look worse shrunk down. So just deal.)

Now, granted one could claim this is “just some liberal rubbish,” but do you notice how the highest multiplier is still under TWO? (~1.7) Even for the “liberal” stuff that he'd be trying to sell?! Nothing ANYWHERE NEAR the four that we'd need.

Now, that 300% return (multipler of 4) only applies to a 5% cut from a 30% base tax rate. Here’s a chart I worked up, showing how much growth you’d need (and the required multiplier) for a given tax cut to pay for itself. Feel free to go in there and monkey with the numbers if you want. The point still stands.  You can see that unless you’re talking about very small tax decreases, from very large rates, you’re talking about growth rates that are only ever talked about in classroom examples. They have no place in business projections (indeed any business would go broke VERY FAST if it relied on this kind of growth assumption) and should have no place in policy discussions.

"Part Two" will show why, in addition to being assinine when taken together, both a flat out FALSE individually as well.